This invention relates to a POS (point of sale) system arrangement and to a method for operating a POS system arrangement.
Such POS system arrangement includes a transport belt and a goods detection device. The transport belt device comprises at least one belt portion which for the transport of the goods present thereon can be put into a feed movement along a goods feed path, wherein the goods are separable from each other along the goods feed path by at least one goods divider. The goods detection device is formed and provided to detect goods which are transported by the transport belt device.
A POS system arrangement as mentioned above is known from DE 10 2008 010 642 A1. A goods divider with an oblong body and a machine-readable mark is used for separating goods deposited on a goods transport belt. A scanning device serving as goods detection device for the optical recognition of a machine-readable mark on the goods thus can add the prices of goods present on the goods transport belt between a first and a second goods divider. The machine-readable marks both on the goods and on the goods dividers are detected by the scanning device. The machine-readable mark can be formed as optical bar code or as RFID chip.
In the known POS system arrangement it is disadvantageous that goods deposited on the transport belt closely one beside the other possibly cannot clearly be recognized by the scanning device, for example because a first piece of goods conceals an optical sight axis between the scanning device and a machine-readable mark formed as optical code on a second piece of goods. A possible consequence is an unreliable goods recognition of the known POS system arrangement. Customers of the POS system arrangement also frequently are not used or trained to place goods on the transport belt at sufficient distances to each other, so that a reliable recognition of all goods by the scanning device is ensured. To ensure the highest possible comfort for the customers, it therefore is desirable to ensure a reliable goods recognition, even if a customer deposits his/her goods on the transport belt at dense distances to each other.